SpaceX Starship’s Sonic Boom Creates Risk of Structural Damage, Test Finds

Politics|SpaceX Starship’s Sonic Boom Creates Risk of Structural Damage, Test Finds

SpaceX’s new Starship rocket far exceeds the projected maximum noise levels, generating a sonic boom so powerful it risks property damage in the densely populated residential community near its South Texas launch site, new data suggests.

The measurements — of the actual sound and air pressure generated by the rocket during its fifth test launch last month — are the most comprehensive publicly released to date for Elon Musk’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed.

Starship, as tall as a 30-story building, is so large that it generates 10 times as much noise as the Falcon 9 rocket that SpaceX now uses to get cargo and astronauts to orbit, the new data shows. SpaceX plans another test this week.

For residents of South Padre Island and Port Isabel, which are about six miles from SpaceX’s launch site in South Texas, the noise during the October test flight was the equivalent of standing 200 feet from a Boeing 747 plane during its takeoff, said Kent L. Gee, an independent acoustics engineer who conducted the monitoring.

Dr. Gee is the chairman of the physics and astronomy department at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, as well as a researcher helping NASA study ways to reduce noise impacts generated by supersonic planes. The test results were published on Friday in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

The Federal Aviation Administration and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

When supersonic Concorde jets were still in service, the United States banned them from flying over domestic land “so their resulting sonic booms won’t startle the public below or concern them about potential property damage,” according to NASA.